Help 45000+ employees to move fast in a company

Baidu Messenger is an internal IM app using by 45000+ employees. The goal of this product is to help employees find the person and communicate quickly in company.

Role

Sole UX/UI designer

Project Date

Oct 2013 – Jan 2014

Background

Baidu Messenger is an IM messenger designed for 45000+ employees at Baidu. I was working as a lead designer in an internal team to help optimize the business process of the company.

The user problem we addressed was working at a large company like Baidu, finding a person in another team with specific role is hard. People don’t know who is working on which specific project. While cross-functional collaboration happens all the time, we need to create a product that can help employees communicate fast and move fast.

Optimize the journey

Previously, if people wants find a person they don’t know in the company. The journey would be like the following picture:

Understanding the problem

Tools that people are using to communicate were not designed for working.

There are 4 tools that people are using for daily working communication: Baidu Hi (external IM), email, text messages, and Baidu Family (with all employees’ contact info). Baidu Hi and email app were not integrated with a directory of all employees. So people need to use Baidu Family web version to find the person, then contact them. Based on research, it costs lots of time to deal with daily communication. So we think creating an app with all communication related features will help Baiduers to find and talk with the right person quickly.

Product goals

Design a mobile app with communication-related features integrated

Help all employees to work closely and communicate equally

Help users to easily find a person they don’t know

Eliminate security & privacy concern

Search people by tags

Problems:

People don’t know which person is working on with project or product

Improvements:

Let people add tags for themselves so people can search employees by tags